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Good question!
「米国」
According to Japanese Wikipedia, the pronunciation of American was メリケン during the Meiji period, and was rendered into kanji as 「米利堅」
Since the first character is 米 （べい、まい、めい） the abbreviation became 米国. This was despite the fact that the full kanji representation of アメリカ is 亜米利加. I suspect it was because 亜 is already used to represent ...

Most, if not all, of foreign country Kanji names (not including names with obvious different origins such as China and Korea) - and there are many more than 4 - are exactly this kind of abbreviation from a phonetic Kanji spelling of the country's name. 米 is an abbreviation of 亜米利加, 英 is 英吉利.
Look in any Japanese dictionary and you'll find most prominent ...

What did these words mean?
才六, 贅六, 賽六 and 采六 are all the same word written in various kanji. There are several pronunciations:
sairoku: most basic and original.
zeiroku: Derives from above sairoku. This is how an easterner would pronounce the word. ai > eː is a common phonological change in eastern Japanese. Likely pronounced as zeːroku (zeeroku) ...

According to 大辞泉{だいじせん} the term came from 丁稚{でっち}, a term used particularly in the area around Kyōto for "shop boy"/apprentice (and also apparently sometimes used as a derogatory term itself). 小僧{こぞう} was the Edo equivalent of 丁稚.
The suggested development is this:
丁稚 sounds like 重一, a term from sugoroku where both dice come up as ones. The opposite side ...